Founded in 2007, Hagit Yakira dance creates work that resonates with its audiences in intimate and intrinsic ways. The company has established a unique poetic style rooted in generosity and gentleness, offering unforgettable human experiences and breath-taking movement by a collective of highly trained dance artists and collaborators. Drawing material out of everyday life, Hagit Yakira’s work seamlessly shifts between drama and humour through well-considered structures. Audiences engage and empathise with the work because it draws out feelings and emotions in the dancers that are identifiable to all.
In 2007 Hagit left her performing career to start a dance company dedicated to open, relevant and relatable work informed by her background in Dance Movement Therapy. Hagit leads her company with infectious energy, enthusiasm and a genuine interest in her collaborators’ own artistic voices and stories. The company today is a collective of artists, collaborators, professional and non-professional dancers simply sharing her vision and an appreciation for dance as a down-to-earth medium for expression and connection.
The company has toured the UK, Europe, Scandinavia and Israel, receiving unreserved acclaim by audiences, press and industry alike. In 2007, Somewhere Between a Self and Another received second prize in the Burgos New York Choreography Competition. In 2009 Oh Baby received first prize in the Kajaani Choreography Competition.
Free Falling is the second full evening of work produced by Hagit Yakira dance to tour nationally to 15 venues in the UK. 5 venues will have their own unique, local community company join the four professional dancers. They will rehearse and perform alongside Hagit Yakira dance, giving them valuable experience of working with a professional dance company. We want them to be able to join the performance without being excluded because of age or financial barriers. They will need training, costumes and transport, and we hope our Kickstarter campaign will support this. We have ran similar projects in London, but this time we want to reach those that have little access to dance and arts, or no previous experience.
We have been refining the delivery of the On Falling and Recovering community project in London over three years now and have engaged more than 150 people. We now want to roll this out nationwide and are truly grateful for the support we have been given to date.
Our main priority is to include as many people as possible, regardless of social background, limited access or previous dance experience, when we tour across the UK. We want to ensure that there are no barriers to anybody’s engagement with us, and to be able to guarantee that we will provide support to those who need it depending on their individual needs.
The cost of supporting a full community company is very large. We estimate it to be around £5,000 but we hope that through this Kickstarter campaign we will at the very least raise £2,200 to help us support as many people as possible so that they have the chance to take part in this unique opportunity. The more money we raise, the more people with little to no access to the arts will be able to join us.
Free Falling will premiere at Sadler’s Wells in 2016 before visiting several towns and cities across the country in 2017.
Why are we doing this?
Hagit Yakira dance aims to make lives brighter, people feel safer and more confident one step at a time through dance. With a background in Movement Therapy, what makes Hagit Yakira dance different from other choreographers is her focus on allowing individual expression and human connection while increasing trust in an inclusive environment which everyone can join regardless of age, size, gender or background.
In a world that can be scary we want to offer the time and space to people to stop worrying for a few hours, to let go in a safety bubble from the outside world where acceptance and experimentation are embraced. As a member of the audience recently said, Hagit’s shows ‘feel like a big hug’. We believe in the life-changing effect of dance and we want to offer an unforgettable and intimate experience that will stay with the participants and the audience.
We hope that through this project, we will be able to reach and inspire a wider range of people, and that Free Falling will also be enriched by people of all walks of life being present and involved. Without your support this aspect of the tour will not be able to be realised. We are raising money through Kickstarter to widen our reach to those that wouldn’t typically engage with dance.
Our main challenge is to recruit community participants that might not be able to afford joining us. The participants will need costumes, training and transportation and we estimate that these will cost £5,000.
Another challenge will be to engage with those who are hard to reach or lack confidence. We will rely on our years of experience in dance to guide us. Hagit is a trained dance therapist and has a strong track record of social work with all types of people. This area of work is integral to her creations and she has travelled all around the world sharing her practice with others.
Once, and if, we receive money it would take a bit of time for us to recruit the participants. The activity won’t happen until 2017 so we hope that you can be patient whilst we make appropriate preparations. We’ll keep you up to date with our progress via hagityakira.com